Comic book writer/artist John Byrne compared the film to Jack Kirby's comic book metaseries Fourth World, stating in Comic Shop News #497:
“ "The best New Gods movie, IMHO, is ´Masters of the Universe´. I even corresponded with the director, who told me this was his intent, and that he had tried to get [Jack] Kirby to do the production designs, but the studio nixed it." "Check it out. It requires some bending and an occasional sex change (Metron becomes an ugly dwarf, The Highfather becomes the Sorceress), but it's an amazingly close analog, otherwise. And Frank Langella's Skeletor is a dandy Darkseid!" ”

Director Gary Goddard clarified this in a letter appearing in John Byrne's Next Men #26, in which he stated:
“ "As the director of Masters of the Universe, it was a pleasure to see that someone got it. Your comparison of the film to Kirby’s New Gods was not far off. In fact, the storyline was greatly inspired by the classic Fantastic Four/Doctor Doom epics, The New Gods and a bit of Thor thrown in here and there. I intended the film to be a “motion picture comic book,” though it was a tough proposition to sell to the studio at the time. 'Comics are just for kids,' they thought. They would not allow me to hire Jack Kirby who I desperately wanted to be the conceptual artist for the picture…

I grew up with Kirby's comics (I’ve still got all my Marvels from the first issue of Fantastic Four and Spider-Man through the time Kirby left) and I had great pleasure meeting him when he first moved to California. Since that time I enjoyed the friendship of Jack and Roz and was lucky enough to spend many hours with Jack, hearing how he created this character and that one, why a villain has to be even more powerful than a hero, and on and on. Jack was a great communicator, and listening to him was always an education. You might be interested to know that I tried to dedicate Masters of Universe to Jack Kirby in the closing credits, but the studio took the credit out."
”

Brian Cronin, author of the "Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed" column, concludes that "the film itself was not intended to be literally a reworked Fourth World, although the intent WAS to make the film a tribute to Jack Kirby - just a tribute to ALL of his work, not just the Fourth World."[2]

The plotline of Masters of the Universe isn't necessarily similar to that of New Gods, although both feature a monstrous warlord (Skeletor and Darkseid) who seeks to obtain godlike powers. But...

Similarities: Masters of the Universe, while based on the toy line and cartoon series, bear many remarkable similarities. Leave it to comics creator John Byrne to first point out these similarities to fans. In the letter column for his 1994 comic, John Byrne's Next Men' #22, Byrne writes that he counts only three "really great comic-book movies."

He's not wrong. If you watch the movie with New Gods in mind, it's easy to recast the show. Skeletor is villainous Darkseid. He-Man is heroic son Orion. Evil-Lyn is Darkseid's toady DeSaade. The Sorceress plays the role of the Kibry's benevolent Highfather. The tech-wiz dwarf Gwildor is the New God's scientist Metron. Byrne points out that the gruff detective Lubic in the movie seems directly related to Kirby's "Terrible" Turpin. And there's more: check out the Boom Tubes, Flying Thrones, Flying Heroes and Omega Beams (not to mention a swell Kirby helmet)...

Corroborating Evidence: So, were the makers of Masters of the Universe trying to make a New Gods movie on the sly? Well... a little bit.

Director Gary Goddard replied to John Byrne's letter and his response was published in John Byrne's Next Men #26. He denies making a New Gods movie but owns up to a whole lot of Kirby love:

"As the director of Masters of the Universe, it was a pleasure to see that someone got it. Your comparison of the film to Kirby’s New Gods was not far off. In fact, the storyline was greatly inspired by the classic Fantastic Four/Doctor Doom epics, The New Gods and a bit of Thor thrown in here and there. I intended the film to be a “motion picture comic book,” though it was a tough proposition to sell to the studio at the time. “Comics are just for kids,” they thought. They would not allow me to hire Jack Kirby who I desperately wanted to be the conceptual artist for the picture...

"I grew up with Kirby’s comics (I’ve still got all my Marvels from the first issue of Fantastic Four and Spider-Man through the time Kirby left) and I had great pleasure meeting him when he first moved to California. Since that time I enjoyed the friendship of Jack and Roz and was lucky enough to spend many hours with Jack, hearing how he created this character and that one, why a villain has to be even more powerful than a hero, and on and on. Jack was a great communicator, and listening to him was always an education. You might be interested to know that I tried to dedicate Masters of Universe to Jack Kirby in the closing credits, but the studio took the credit out."

Rip-o-meter: 3. Loving homage.

__________________Catch a bright star and a place it on your forehead
Say a few spells and baby, there you go
Take a black cat and sit it on your shoulder
And in the morning you'll know all you know

This is sort of true, but I think it's more due to the source material being derrivative and overly familiar; Masters of the Universe has elements of the New Gods, Conan The Barbarian, and Thor, with maybe even a little star wars. There's nothing in there that's that original, so you're going to see tons of passing similarities.

COMIC URBAN LEGEND: Masters of the Universe was a reworked Fourth World movie.

STATUS: False

A significant number of fans of the film Masters of the Universe suggest that the film is really a reworked Fourth World film.

The film features characters that seem like they have analogues from Jack Kirby’s classic Fourth World series of comics: Orion (He-Man), Kalibak (Beast Man), Kanto (Blade), and Darkseid (Skeletor).

The way that they travel in the film from Eternia to Earth is essentially a Boom Tube, and there’s a lot of other similar touches.

However, the film itself was not intended to be literally a reworked Fourth World, although the intent WAS to make the film a tribute to Jack Kirby - just a tribute to ALL of his work, not just the Fourth World.

Writer/artist John Byrne was quoted in Comic Shop News #497 as saying, “The best New Gods movie, IMHO, is ´Masters of the Universe´. I even corresponded with the director, who told me this was his intent, and that he had tried to get Kirby to do the production designs, but the studio nixed it.” This is probably where most of the confusion comes from, for while Byrne is basically correct, his statement that the intent of the film was to be a New Gods movie does not match what the director, Gary Goddard, wrote to Byrne in the letter column of Next Men #26, in response to a comment Byrne had made in an earlier column about the similarities between the film and the Fourth World comics.

In that column, Goddard wrote:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gary Goddard

As the director of Masters of the Universe, it was a pleasure to see that someone got it. Your comparison of the film to Kirby’s New Gods was not far off. In fact, the storyline was greatly inspired by the classic Fantastic Four/Doctor Doom epics, The New Gods and a bit of Thor thrown in here and there. I intended the film to be a “motion picture comic book,” though it was a tough proposition to sell to the studio at the time. “Comics are just for kids,” they thought. They would not allow me to hire Jack Kirby who I desperately wanted to be the conceptual artist for the picture…

I grew up with Kirby’s comics (I’ve still got all my Marvels from the first issue of Fantastic Four and Spider-Man through the time Kirby left) and I had great pleasure meeting him when he first moved to California. Since that time I enjoyed the friendship of Jack and Roz and was lucky enough to spend many hours with Jack, hearing how he created this character and that one, why a villain has to be even more powerful than a hero, and on and on. Jack was a great communicator, and listening to him was always an education. You might be interested to know that I tried to dedicate Masters of Universe to Jack Kirby in the closing credits, but the studio took the credit out.

Still, whether the film was literally a Fourth World remake or not, the devotion to the work of Jack Kirby remains, and it is quite interesting on Goddard’s part.

Thanks to Bright Raven for finding me the right issue of Next Men and Ryan Day for sending me a copy of the letter. Thanks to yo go re for suggesting this one (it was on the to-do list anyways, but I figure, might as well mention it).

GM: Yes. This wasn’t my idea – I asked for generic space shuttles in the script - but it does seem appropriate, given how much of Star Wars echoes ‘New Gods’ (although Star Wars just can’t come close to Kirby’s transcendental vision. The Force doesn’t even have a Wall! Real fans out there will of course be familiar with the He-Man film, Masters of the Universe, which is the closest any movie has so far come to copying New Gods outright. They even have the Boom Tube, while Skeletor is played as Darkseid and He-man is very obviously Orion).

This is sort of true, but I think it's more due to the source material being derrivative and overly familiar; Masters of the Universe has elements of the New Gods, Conan The Barbarian, and Thor, with maybe even a little star wars. There's nothing in there that's that original, so you're going to see tons of passing similarities.

They're not passing similarities. It's all deliberate. You read how the director Gary Goddard, with whom I have actually discussed the movie with, wanted the movie dedicated to Kirby? Masters of the Universe movie is quite a departure from the He-Man cartoon. It takes the basics of it, and turns it into a huge Kirby-fest.

__________________Catch a bright star and a place it on your forehead
Say a few spells and baby, there you go
Take a black cat and sit it on your shoulder
And in the morning you'll know all you know

Tom Scioli is slated to have a big 2012. With the last two issues of his and Joe Casey's"GODLAND" slated to hit the stands later this year, and with a collected edition of the Scioi-written-and-drawn "American Barbarian" coming out from AdHouse sometime in the next few months, Tom is poised to blast comic shops with his explosive imagery and Kirby-esque designs.

I wanted to find out, from Tom, what was going into his 2012 work, and we'll get to those kinds of questions and answers next week. First, we talked about the comics that inspired him, and took a close look at one particularly influential Jack Kirby issue that still resonates today.

Tim Callahan: Okay Tom, we're going to talk about Jack Kirby soon enough, but let's not start there. Let's start with something formative outside of Kirby. Tell me about a comic or two that had an impact from you at a young age. What were some of your keystone comics?

Tom Scioli: "The Vengeance of Skeletor" and "King of Castle Greyskull," both minicomics packaged with He-Man figures, with beautiful art by Alfredo Alcala. "Vengeance of Skeletor" was the more evocative of the two, with a really scary/psychedelic jungle and a sea monster in a bottomless lake. The imagery of "King of Castle Greyskull" didn't stick with me as much, but it was probably the more influential of the two, just in that I'd re-enact variations on its story when I'd play with my toys.

I remember those comics! I don't have mine any more, but that was one of my early exposures to comics, now that you mention it. Certainly my first exposure to Alfredo Alcala. I remember buying the follow-up miniseries from DC, along with the "DC Comics Presents" team-up between He-Man and Superman, but those weren't as good as the minicomics packaged with the toys, from what I recall. And since, in my childhood head, the Masters of the Universe saga was kind of like a high-fantasy/supernatural Conan epic (though I wouldn't have known Conan yet), I was hugely disappointed when the Filmation cartoon came out, with Orko hamming it up. Orko was not in the Alcala comics, for sure.

Did those Masters of the Universe comics lead into other comics for you? Or were they kind of isolated examples from that time in your life? Let me know the journey from those minicomics to your commitment to comics as an art form.

I wonder if there are a lot of people our age who had that identical experience. I loved the fantasy of those early minicomics. I didn't like when they moved into a more comic-book direction, with ones like "The Ordeal of Man-E-Faces." When the Filmation cartoon came out, I hated it. I watched every episode, but I hated it. He-Man got domesticated. He was an enigmatic wanderer of the plains before. Now he had a mom and dad and a secret identity and comic relief. Beast Man and Skeletor were scary, in the cartoon they were buffoonish. I've later found out that those early minicomics were great because there wasn't a mythology set up yet. The writers could just do whatever they wanted. Once they set about deliberately crafting a bible that's when all those trite pre-fabricated elements started coming in.

Those were my earliest exposure to comics, and they were ones that stuck with me. I'd buy A "Star Wars" comic here and there, or Superman. But it was out of a fandom to "Star Wars" or Superman, not to comics. I didn't have an older sibling or a parent who was into comics and gave me their old collection. Comics were something other kids were into, but not me. It wasn't until the late 80s, the post-Dark Knight period when comic stores started showing up, that I started checking out this thing called comics. That's where I got my first Kirby comics. I wanted to check out "old" comics and the two Kirby comics I grabbed looked suitably old.
If there's a thread from those He-Man minicomics to my comics career, it's a path of following the things that hit those same notes. It started out as more of a genre thing than a comics thing. It went like this: "Star Wars" -- Thundarr -- He-Man -- Thor -- Dune -- Nexus -- Seven Samurai -- Ronin -- New Gods -- making my own comics. That's my personal chronology. For me, Kirby's "Thor" is linked to the 80s, "New Gods" is the 90s, because that's how I encountered them.

When you took those early-for-you trips into your first direct market stores, what made you want to even seek out older comics instead of the shiny new ones on the shelf? Was it a function of the type of stories you visited -- I know in my case, the store I used to frequent was a used book store loaded with piles of old magazines and comics, so the older stuff was emphasized -- or was it just some historical interest on your part, or what?

I really don't know. There were pricey Marvel Masterworks volumes with their devotional book design. There was the idea that old comics were valuable. There was a mystique surrounding old comics. Another comic that was formative for me was "Superman from the Thirties to the Seventies." It was the only comic you could get out of the library, so I checked it out over and over. Talking about it now, it seems like the pull of old comics would be really strong. That would be the most obvious thing that comics stores had to offer that 7-11 didn't.

Of course I bought my share of new comics, too. The "new" comics I was drawn to, as it turned out, were also old comics. "Classic X-Men," which reprinted the Claremont-Cockrum-Byrne years was one of my favorite comics. I had no idea that these were old stories. Also "Marvel Tales," which was the Spider-Man reprint book, was another favorite, which was reprinting Claremont/Byrne Spider-Man stories at the time I was buying it.

From what I've seen of your online presence, you are somewhat of a comics historian, or at least you have a strong interest in the aesthetic history of the medium, specifically around superhero comics. Is that a fair observation to make? And now that you're looking back on some of those stories that were formative influences on you, what do you think of them, from an aesthetic history perspective? Is there stuff that you wish you had seen earlier? Stuff you didn't like then, but really appreciate now, or vice-versa?

Definitely. Everybody I know who makes comics seems to be very well-educated in the history of the comics traditions they are working in.
Sometimes I wish I would've read more Kirby as a kid, but I think I was better off that I didn't get to read most of it until I was older. I think I needed Kirby more in adulthood than I did in childhood.

The stuff I liked as a kid for the most part holds up, but that's probably because it helped form the baseline of my likes and dislikes. I recently read a bunch of those He-Man minicomics, and the Alcala ones are still the gold standard. The Bruce Timm ones are pretty neat, too. I liked Ditko's Spider-Man a lot, and I still do. I think I only had a couple of Ditko reprints, but I wish I'd had more. I think they felt contemporary because the 60s Spider-Man cartoon was still in regular rotation at the time. That's what Spider-man looked like. It didn't feel like something from another era. A kid in the early eighties consumed a lot of sixties and seventies culture. The Beverly Hillbillies, H.R. Pufnstuff, The Brady Bunch -- these were part of the eternal present.

I didn't like the Spider-man comics that were new at the time I was reading them. It was the post-Watchmen era, and Spider-Man was too dark for me. It was the era of "Kraven's Last Hunt." People talk about how great that comic is, but I don't know that I'll ever be able to see it that way because it wasn't what my 10-year-old self was looking for from a Spider-Man comic.

The Claremont/Cockrum/Byrne X-Men are still an enjoyable read and are nice-looking comics. I read a lot of Batman comics leading up to the Michael Keaton movie. I bought "Death in the Family" as it came out. For all their grimness, those comics were too sedate, too tame. I would've liked a little more silver age bombast, but I wouldn't have known to call it that. I still really like Jim Aparo's Batman art from that era.

I guess something I really liked back then was the switch from newsprint, to the heavier white paper, with the higher resolution, more saturated color printing. I hated the feel of newsprint and welcomed the change. Now I feel the opposite way. Newsprint comics seem to have a more pleasing, more unified aesthetic.

I didn't even realize Bruce Timm worked on any Masters of the Universe comics. Which ones did he do? What were they about?

He drew "King of the Snake Men." It reads really well and has a few signature Timm-isms. "Grizzlor, the Legend Comes Alive" is not quite as good, but still pretty lively. Then there were a couple that he just inked, which were pretty good: "Escape from the Slime Pit" and "The Powers of Grayskull."

I guess we should probably just move beyond listing which comics we liked and didn't like, growing up -- for the record, I thought the cover to "Elektra: Assassin" #1 was so silly I refused to buy it when it came out, and I thought Kirby was pretty terrible because all I knew him from back then were the covers to the "Super Powers" comics -- and really get into what's important: namely, Jack Kirby's best work. I'm certainly partial to 1970s Kirby, and though I appreciate his work in the early Silver Age, it's "New Gods" and "O.M.A.C." and "Kamandi" and even "The Eternals" and "Devil Dinosaur" that really get me excited about his comics. Those comics, in fading newsprint or in glossy hardcover collections, are still the things that I look to when I need to recharge and remind myself why comics are such an amazingly powerful visual form.

Because you're an artist, and an aesthetic historian, and a Kirby man to the core, it might be beneficial for us to focus our Kirby discussion a bit by talking about a single story or a single issue and really go through it and talk about Kirby's work through that lens. What do you say? What's a Kirby comic that you'd like to really hone in on? What's the good stuff in that comic?

It would be issue #7 of "New Gods," entitled "The Pact." That's the comic that really hit me hard and made Kirby jump to number one for me. It was "Star Wars" and He-Man and Thundarr and Dark Knight Returns and Hellboy all rolled into one, but 100 times better.

Just reading that opening caption on page 1, it feels like the bible, it feels like the opening crawl of "Star Wars." I'll never know what it's like reading the New Gods without knowing "Star Wars." When I read it, it feels like "Star Wars," but that's because I've seen "Star Wars," so I know how to assemble these words and images in my head. What did readers in the 70s think when these books came out? Did it make any sense to them? Is that why the books weren't a massive hit, because you had to watch a movie that didn't exist yet in order to fully appreciate them?

I love how Kirby uses two exclamation marks for every sentence, until he needs to up the ante and go with three exclamation marks for emphasis!!!

I understand the "Star Wars" connection, because the mythology has a similarity and, of course, I also don't know what it's like to read this stuff without having "Star Wars" in mind and yet...this doesn't feel much like the aesthetics of "Star Wars." This feels muscular, even on the opening, tranquil page in a way "Star Wars" doesn't. "Star Wars" feels like Alex Raymond to me, with its thin heroes and their swashbuckling ways. This opening page of "The Pact," and the scene that follows, feels like a rhino in a china shop. Kirby is bursting at the seams. The panels can barely contain his bulky forms and energetic lines.

There is a precursor to this early-New Genesis stuff -- at least in terms of its setting -- in the "Tales of Asgard" work Kirby did in the back of "Thor." But this is a level up from that, right? It's got an intensity that even those mythic stories didn't have.

I've read so many Kirby comics, the exclamation points are invisible to me. I grew up with the Odyssey 2, not the Atari. I don't know if you've read any of the instruction booklets from it, but it's all exclamation points.

It gets more Star Warsy as it goes on. Funny you should mention Raymond, because to me this is Kirby doing full-on Raymond. Look at that first year of "Flash Gordon." Before the art got too pretty. "New Gods" is Kirby going back to his Raymond roots. Steppenwolf's design is Prince Barin. Heggra is Darkseid's mother. I wouldn't be surprised if Ming were his father. The Royer inking throws you off the Raymond trail, but look at the pencils. Kirby's pencil lines look like Raymond's brushstrokes.

Also, "Star Wars" was pre-steroid era moviemaking. You couldn't find an actor who was built like a Kirby character. If it came out in the mid-80s the characters would've probably been played by more Kirby-esque actors.
I'd read enough Thor comics that I got that Balduur and the unnamed Sorceress could be Balder and Karnilla. Although I pictured them as the stone-like megagods that Metron ran into in the opening pages of "New Gods" #5. I wasn't certain of the Thor connection, although it seems like the consensus is that's what Kirby intended. The references to the "Old Gods" in this issue sound mysterious, Lovecraftian.

This portrayal of Darkseid is an interesting one, because he looks just like full-fledged, ominously evil, nearly omnipotent Darkseid, but he doesn't seem to have a lot of power here, in these early days. He appears first with a robotic hand -- a "Killing Glove" built by his pal DeSaad, and his uncle Steppenwolf gives him grief about his "bizarre companions. Darkseid still has the arrogance we know and love, but this is the eager, ambitious young Darkseid, who later talks about how he's into new technology and he has the foresight to see where the culture is heading.

"We must seek NEW roads to tread!!" he declares to his uncle.

Meanwhile, in that earlier scene, Kirby throws in that tiny character bit where a steward, ON THE FIELD OF BATTLE, is refilling Steppenwolf's horn flask while the uncle gives Darkseid grief.

It's not all wall-to-wall bombast, which is what many readers seem to forget.

MOVIE URBAN LEGEND: The Jean-Claude Van Damme film Cyborg was originally going to be both the sequel to the Masters of the Universe film AND a Spider-Man film.

Cannon’s rights agreement with Marvel required Cannon to release a Spider-Man film by 1990, so they came up with a clever approach. Writer/director Albert Pyun explained how it would work:

Quote:

The concept was to shoot 2 weeks of “Spider-Man” first. The section of Peter Parker’s story before he was bitten. Then we would shoot 6 weeks of “Masters 2″. The actor cast to play Parker would undergo a streneuous 8 week workout regimen supervised by a fitness professor at UCLA, Dr. Eric Sternlicht to build size and muscle mass. After shooting “Masters 2″ we would resume shooting “Spider-Man”.

Pyun doesn’t recall who was cast as Peter Parker. The projects were to be filmed in Wilmington, North Carolina, where they created all of the sets and costumes for Masters of the Universe and the New York City sets for the early Spider-Man sequences. Pyun estimated the budget for Spider-Man was roughly $6 million (the largest he had ever worked with), while the one for Masters was about $4.5 million. Mattel had submitted all of their approvals, and production was ready to get under way.

Then, two weeks before filming began, the bottom fell out.

Cannon had bounced its licensing checks to Marvel and Mattel, and negotiations fell apart, as the studio had little money to spend. Suddenly, neither film was going to be made. Pyun was left sitting there with all of these sets and costumes but unable to start filming. However, he had an idea. Cannon was already in the hole about $2 million on the two projects, so why not just make a different film that would incorporate the sets and costumes but wouldn’t require licensing fees? Cannon agreed. and Pyun spent the weekend putting together a script for a new film called Cyborg.

Pyun recalled:

Quote:

I wrote a first draft of what became “Cyborg” over a weekend and brought in a young actor — who wanted to be a screenwriter — to do polishes. His name was Don Michael Paul and he has gone on to write and direct “Half Past Dead” and Harley Davidson and the “Marlboro Man”.

Pyun wrote the script with Cannon star Chuck Norris in mind for the lead role, but instead he was given Jean-Claude Van Damme, who starred in the Cannon-financed film Bloodsport the previous year. Naturally, Pyun had to re-write the lead character (originally an over-the-hill ex-Army Ranger), making him the mercenary character Van Damme eventually played. Pyun recalled that the budget, with Van Damme’s salary included, was roughly $500,000.

The film was a modest hit, taking in more than $10 million at the box office. It has become a cult classic in the years since. However, from an ingenuity standpoint, it was clearly a major success.

I'd say until an actual New Gods movie comes out, "Apokolips... Now!" parts one and two, episodes of Superman: The Animated Series are for now still the "ultimate Jack Kirby movie".
Combined with "Tools of the Trade" (which proceeded it and featured Dan Turpin as a direct Kirby Analog, and "Father's Day.
Followed by "Legacy" parts one and two, all combined to make for the ultimate Kirby movie experience so far.